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Gadgets For a Budding Geek?
fprintf writes "As much as I hate to admit it, it looks like my 13-year-old son is following in my footsteps and preferring interesting, science-based toys. In the past he has been really interested in Lava Lamps, Newton's Cradle, and anything magnetic. It seems the knick-knacks that have generated the most interest were small and relatively inexpensive. For example, a small laser pointer keychain I bought him a couple of years ago still provides tons of entertainment. Yesterday I showed him ThinkGeek and he really liked the Levitron. I wanted to ask the Slashdot crowd what were some other really neat, interesting gadgets? Is there anything cool in the under-$50 range that you would like in your stocking this year?"
If you hate to admit it, live in denial.
As much as I like ThinkGeek, their selection is limited to gadgets. I found that assembling and -- to my parents dismay -- disassembling things are what really grabbed my interest.
I would take a look at the various kits from American Science & Surplus. There are a number of other sites (e.g., Carl's Electronics) which have even more kits, but I haven't ordered from them so I can't say whether they're worthwhile or not. (These days, most of my toys come from DigiKey, and not in kit form.)
If you have a ton of old hard drives laying around, break out the torx drivers and extract the magnets. The mirror-like surface of the platter is interesting, too.
Bloody hell, do people actually READ the post before commenting? First someone posted a $150 item when he CLEARLY asked for sub $50 ones, and now this! A suggestion for a laser pointer where he said "For example, a small laser pointer keychain I bought him a couple of years ago still provides tons of entertainment. "
*sigh*
Opt-out sucks and well run companies rarely resort to using it.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I think it also might be illegal.
Because he waited until his kid was 13 to teach him how to be a geek.
My six year old is pissed I won't let him have his own soldering iron yet. I told him when he can get the spring-post and/or snap terminal circuits built right the first time, then he can solder stuff.
I can't get circuits right the first time, even when I'm being paid to build them. That's what breadboards are for. You build it on the breadboard, go "huh, that's not right," fix it, and then transfer it to soldered perf board. You don't build with solder the first time. If you need it right the first time (because you're fabbing a PCB, for example) then there's hours worth of design review and double checking involved.
If you're worried about letting the magic smoke out... well, you can do that just as easily on a breadboard or spring terminals. Besides, being overly paranoid about the magic smoke is bad for learning. Go buy 100 transistors from digikey ($6 for 2N3904 / 2N3906), a dozen op amps, a couple hundred assorted resistors, etc. Obviously you don't want to teach carelessness, but paranoia about $0.05 components isn't warranted either.
How about a subscription to Make or Craft, backed by your commitment of time and money towards a project per issue?
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
IIRC, you can't make a purchase without setting up an account. On the account setup page is a pretty clear description of their hatred of spam, a link to their privacy policy, and a drop down box in which you can select whether or not you want the newsletter. They lose some points for having it default to YES, but it's not like they tried to hide it either.
And if you're creating an account on any website without checking carefully for defaulted opt-ins, then you have to turn in your geek card.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious